“There,” he said.

We walked back to the car with the empty craft-store bag, and I took the long way around the block because the light on Fourth was always red.

That was how I ended up idling in front of Gold & Silver Exchange.

The window hadn’t changed. The same crowded velvet trays, the same tired fluorescent tube humming above the display, the same handwritten card promising the best prices in Knox County. I could have gone in. For the first time in two years, I had forty dollars in my account that wasn’t already promised to someone else.

I didn’t go in.

I told myself it was because Nolan was hungry, and because the light had turned green, and because I already knew what a pawn shop does with gold it has held for four months.

But the truth is I wasn’t ready to find out.